


kiss me goodbye (don't tell me why)

by mymostimaginaryfriend



Category: Queen of the South (TV)
Genre: Jeresa Reunion Scenarios, Mardi Gras, S4 AU, angst beads and a body count, maybe the most melodramatic thing i've ever written which is really saying something
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-26
Updated: 2019-08-26
Packaged: 2020-09-27 08:28:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20404708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mymostimaginaryfriend/pseuds/mymostimaginaryfriend
Summary: The blare of a trumpet pierces the night air like a warning as the beat of the brass band keeps time with her pounding heart.  The crowd of revelers swarm around her, their masked faces leering and laughing in the face of her fear. The merrymaking mob offers both safety in numbers and danger in anonymity.Teresa isn’t the only one hiding in the crowd.  Someone is trying to kill her.aka JERESA! MARDI GRAS! REUNION!





	kiss me goodbye (don't tell me why)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [queenstephaniaa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenstephaniaa/gifts).

> I started this fic wayyyy back in January after we found out S4 would be set in New Orleans so not a whole lot actually matches up with this season. BUT with the impending unexpected visitor in the finale (!!!!) I was inspired to finally dust off this draft and give it a go. Disclaimer: I wrote this pretty fast without my usual number of drafts so expect 50% more melodrama and 50% less proper tense usage.
> 
> (Steph I know this wasn't quite what we flailed about way back when but I hope you enjoy it just the same!)
> 
> Title reworded from the song "Goodbye", featuring Soap&Skin by Apparat, which also includes the deliciously angsty line:" And watch the only way out disappear"... highly recommend.

The blare of a trumpet pierces the night air like a warning as the beat of the brass band keeps time with her pounding heart. The crowd of revelers swarm around her, their masked faces leering and laughing in the face of her fear. The merrymaking mob offers both safety in numbers and danger in anonymity.

Teresa isn’t the only one hiding in the crowd. Someone is trying to kill her.

Ever since El Santo disappeared she’d been looking for backup suppliers. She had her new “partnership” with Castel but the woman always seemed to be one step ahead of Teresa’s operation, wanting her to succeed—but only to a point and only under her direct approval and supervision. In the short-term, the partnership benefited them both. In the long-term Teresa wanted better options.

It had taken considerable legwork, but she had finally made a promising connection outside of Castel’s lengthy shadow: Andre Dupont, a powerful distributor with control of the southeastern seaboard, including the port of New Orleans.

Their meet was set for Mardi Gras under the live oak trees of Jackson Square. Dupont thought the Krewe du Vieux parade scheduled to make their way down Decatur Street would provide a welcome distraction for any potential onlookers or eavesdroppers. Teresa thought it’d provide ample cover for an escape route if things went wrong.

Things went wrong, of course. They always did.

The meet fell through almost immediately. Dupont wasn’t alone; he had his own debts to settle and planned on using the bounty on Teresa’s head to clear the red off his ledger. Luckily the artists packing up their wares and the stragglers still heading toward the parade afforded Pote and Teresa enough cover to run. Unfortunately, Javier set up on the wrong side of the park to be of much help.

If she longs for a different sniper in the moment, there’s no time to linger on it. She’s too busy running for her life.

In the confusion she and Pote split for different exits, both heading for the safety of the parade crowd. He won’t be happy that they had gotten separated and neither is she but there is nothing to do about it now. She has to believe he’ll be waiting for her at the safehouse as planned. She just has to make it there too.

She sprints down the cobblestone street and slips into the swarm of people, cutting through a sidewalk cafe to grab a handful of discarded beads off a table as she passes.

The voice in her head—that cool, steely voice she always hears in times like these—always makes it sound so easy: _Blend in. Get out. Survive._ As if one misstep won’t end with her bleeding out in the street.

On cue, a rough hand grabs her arm and she whirls around in panic but it’s just a drunken frat boy, leering down at her. “Where’s your mask?” he slurs, the words sinking through her adrenaline to form an idea in her mind.

She forces herself to keep her features relaxed as she smiles up at him, running a light hand up his face to swipe the mask off his forehead. “Right here,” she smirks, tipping his drink with her elbow, causing just enough of a distraction to slip away again into the crowd.

As she steps off the curb, a movement from above catches her eye and she glimpses a man standing in the shadows of the balcony above a corner bistro. Her heart skips a beat at the sharp turn of his head in her direction, but she calms when she sees his mask and beads. He’s just another reveler enjoying the parade, just taking advantage of a better view. Still it’s hard to look away. For a second she almost thinks—

His head snaps left and she follows the movement, looking over her shoulder to the sounds of angry protests spreading behind her like a wave. Two men are elbowing their way through the crowd—two men gunning for the target on her back and the money on her head.

She hastily dons her disguise and lowers her head, pushing on. She forces herself to keep a smile on her face and a relaxed pace as she makes her way through the crowd. The mask obscures her peripheral vision and she doesn’t realize she’s walked herself into a dead end until she hits the steel barricade separating the crowd from the floats.

She follows the path of the barrier with her eyes: the parade route is herding her straight back to the Square and Dupont.

She debates blending into a group of women standing nearby, laughing and hollering at the approaching parade but the thought of being pinned in by the barricade to her front and the crowd at her back has her searching for a better option. She spies an alley running along the Saint Louis Cathedral. If she can sneak back past her pursuers, she might be able to lose them through the garden, maybe even hide in the church itself.

“I’ve got eyes on her!”

She takes off like a shot through the crowd, no longer concerned with blending in. She hears a pained yell behind her but doesn’t dare turn around, skirting the perimeter of the garden with its brick walls and wrought iron fence looking for a way inside. She’s just rounding the far corner into the alley when she runs directly into the chest of one of Dupont’s men.

In a rare bit of luck, she’s taken him by surprise as well. By the time he realizes who she is, she has a firm grip on his jacket and is delivering a swift knee to his balls, yelling at the top of her lungs “Get off me you pervert!” He doubles over in pain and she pushes his prone form back toward the street to be swallowed up by the righteous crowd.

She knows it won’t slow him down for long but she’s grateful for the head start. She takes off down the alley, sees a gate to the garden and slips inside. She scans the courtyard quickly for a weapon, somewhere—anywhere to hide but her eyes catch once again on a shadow in the dark. She isn’t alone.

She sees a flash of a familiar Mardi Gras mask and her blood runs cold. It’s him—the man from the balcony, standing at the far wall...looking down at a dead body at his feet.

She scrambles back, shoes slipping over the gravel and times slows as he turns around at the sound, reaching behind him in one fluid movement to draw his gun. The gate bangs open behind her and she knows this is it. She’s trapped.

She could already hear the _snick, snick_ of two shots firing through a silencer, the gasp of a dying breath, the thud of a body hitting the ground. No matter how far she’s come or the heights she has reached the house of cards that is her life is one second from falling to the floor.

He raises his revolver, his eyes locking with hers from behind his mask. A lightning bolt of certainty ricochets through her chest.

She knows he won’t miss.

She knows it because he’s never missed a target from this distance in his life.

_Snick, snick. Gasp. Thud._

He’s still staring at her when she opens her eyes.

“James?”

He jerks into motion at the sound of her voice, doing a once over of the courtyard before holstering his gun and walking briskly toward her.

“You okay?” It’s James, but it’s not: voice low, words clipped, movements sharp and perfunctory. He scans her from head to toe but doesn’t quite meet her eyes, side-steps her outreached arm.

She can only nod in mute shock as he moves past her to the corpse of Dupont’s man on the ground behind her. Dupont’s _other_ man, she amends as she takes a closer look at the second body in the garden.

He’d killed them both. He’d shown up out of nowhere to save her. Again.

“James,” she repeats, staring as he grabs the dead man by the armpits and starts hauling him toward a hedge. “How...What are you doing here?”

“Get his legs.”

She swallows the rest of her questions and complies, helping him move the body off the path before asking again.

“Why are you here? Why are you in New Orleans? ”

“Why are _you_?”

She’s taken aback a moment. The James she knew was always so in tune with the comings and goings of their business she had jokingly thought of him as a walking Cartel LinkedIn. All this time she had been looking for him. Had he not been keeping tabs on her as well?

“I tried to get word to you,” she says. “Let you know where I was in case….”

He pauses his search through the dead man’s pockets but doesn’t look up. She swallows hard. “No one knew where you were. You were like a ghost.”

She cannot see his face clearly with the mask but she thinks she sees a brief bitter twist of his lips at her words. When he stands and turns toward her however, his face is as smooth as glass. He holds the dead man’s gun out to her.

“Take this and get out of here.”

She sidesteps the gun and grabs his arm instead. His shoulders stiffen but his eyes flash behind the mask, finally a sign of life underneath the icy efficiency. Standing this close, it hits her that it’s really him. Not a wish, not a ghost, but flesh and blood. She suddenly needs to see him, to _really_ see him.

She reaches up a hand to his mask but he grabs her wrist. “Teresa—” he starts, and it’s the voice she knows, a voice anything but unaffected. “I—” He cuts off mid-sentence, cocking his head as though listening intently. For the first time, she notices the wire leading up his neck to an earpiece. He releases her arm and spins around, speaking in hushed, hurried sentences to the dark.

“Yeah. I know. Understood. But our agreement—”

For a moment she can’t see past the tense line of his shoulders, conditioned to listen to his body language as much as his words, but then it sinks in. When she couldn’t track him down, she’d let herself imagine that he was out of this life. That maybe he no longer had to carry the weight of violence on his shoulders or wash any more blood from his hands. As much as it ripped her in two, it had been a balm on the ache of his departure: the dream that he might be somewhere safe. Happy.

Now it seems like the cold cruel doubts she felt in her darker moments were telling the truth. He hadn’t left the business. He’d just left her.

“Neither was watching her die—”

Just like that, his words send her thoughts reeling in a different direction. She barely registers James pulling out his earpiece or pushing up his mask until she looks up to see him walking toward her with a focused intensity that takes her breath away.

“Teresa, listen to me. There’s not much time.”

“Who was that?” she demands. “What agreement?”

He flinches but only grows more insistent, grabbing her hand and pressing the gun to her palm. “You gotta get out of here. It’s not safe.”

She wraps her hands around his, keeping him close. “Then let’s go. Come on, let’s go.”

His eyes roam over her face, his throat working against the unspoken words she can see in his eyes but he can’t bring himself to say.

“James,” she urges. “Come with me.”

“I can’t do that.”

She searches his face. “_Can’t?”_

He opens his mouth then closes it, stopped short by the sound of a tinny, stern voice filtering through the discarded earpiece dangling down his chest. His hands jerk under hers but he’s unable to complete the movement, stuck in her grasp.

_“Come in. I repeat. Come in. Mendoza is not the mission. Trevor, do you copy? Trevor check in. Do you copy?”_

She loses her grip on him in her shock, his hands slipping through her fingers. The tracker, Devon. _Trevor_. For one sickening second her survival instinct screams _enemy_ and she’s right back where this started. Right back where they ended.

Her eyes snap to his but she doesn’t see guilt in his tormented gaze. She sees pain, so much pain, raw vulnerability and...love.

One heartbeat, two, and then just as quickly, his eyes are shuttered, his jaw is set. She accepts the gun he offers with numb fingers. He grips her arms, takes a step closer but then lets her go.

“Goodbye, Teresa.”

The sound of his voice paired with the sight of him leaving finally lifts her paralysis. “James. Wait, no—”

His steps don’t falter.

“Don’t do this,” her voice breaks. “James, you don’t have to do this.”

She is suddenly certain if he leaves now, she will never see him again.

_I can’t lose you too._

Maybe she says it out loud because he stops in his tracks, frozen for a moment save the shuddering rise and fall of his shoulders. And then suddenly he’s right in front of her, one hand finding her hip, the other curling around the back of her neck. His lips meet hers in a kiss both deep and bruising and still not enough.

She grabs onto him before he can let go, softening the kiss, losing herself in both the buoyant joy and bottomless devastation. She tastes the salt on his lips, the joy, the pain, the wonder and heartache.

It’s nothing like their last kiss goodbye. This time they both know what they have...and what they’re losing.

He runs a hand up her back and rests his forehead against hers before wrapping his arms around her, holding her so tightly she can’t imagine that he’ll ever let go. But too soon he does. She barely hears the low words whispered against her temple before he steps back out of her arms.

The gate at the far side of the garden careens open with bang and she whirls gun raised and ready.

“Teresita.”

“Pote,” she sags in relief, lifting an eyebrow wryly as Javier stumbles in behind him. “This isn’t the safe house.”

“Phone tracker,” he huffs and his eyes widen. “Was that….?”

Teresa turns to find the garden empty behind her, the west gate slightly ajar. James is a ghost once more.

“Yes,” she says staring into the dark alley.

_“You can’t save me, Teresa,”_ he’d told her again like he had once before so long ago. _“Please don’t try.”_

Her answer now is the same as it had always been: like hell she couldn’t.

She turns to Javier and gives the order: “Follow him.”

James would do what he had to do. And so would she.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading and I really hope you liked it!  
Can't wait to all lose our minds together Thursday night! 
> 
> find me on tumblr: mymostimaginaryfriend


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